1. Field of the Invention
Detergents are used throughout industry for a wide range of applications. They not only have home use for cleaning eating ware, floors, clothes, etc., but are used commercially for cleaning manufactured items, in motor fuels, for removal of paints, oil recovery, ore processing, chemical processing, releasing plastic parts from molds, suspension of pigments, insecticides and herbicides, and for use in emulsion polymerization, dissolution of drugs, purification of proteins, bioanalytical applications, etc.
In assays for analytes of interest, it is often necessary to solubilize a microorganism to expose its antigenic sites to recognition by a labelled binding partner. Sometimes a detergent is used to solubilize the microorganism. However, the detergent can interfere with the assay; and, frequently, it is desirable to remove a detergent after it has served its function in assays for microbial analytes. Removal of the detergent generally has some drawbacks. One drawback is that the removal often requires at least one extra processing step. Another drawback is that material is sometimes lost in the extra processing step. Since the micro-organism is present in small quantities, this can be a serious drawback.
Destructible surfactants have been employed in preparative chemistry. Such surfactants have been used to overcome the effects of emulsion formation during extraction procedures in surfactant-based organized media containing micelles, inverse micelles, and microemulsions. After the preparative reaction has taken place, the destructible surfactant is converted to nonsurfactant products under mild conditions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Jaeger, et al. in J. Org. Chem. (1986) 51:3956-3959 describe the preparation and characterization of base-sensitive destructible surfactants. Destructible surfactants based on a ketal group are disclosed by Jaeger, et al., ibid. (1984) 49:4545-4547. The preparation and characterization of double-chain destructible surfactants and derived vesicles is discussed by Jaeger, et al., JOACS (1987) 64(11): 1550-1551.